Friday, August 03, 2018

Healthy, Then a Heart Attack

I guess I wasn't alone when I had my heart attack in February. This 46-year-old Sacramento personal trainer simultaneously suffered something very similar, but was hospitalized at Mercy instead.

I find this puzzling. About the "surge" they don't actually say. But there was a lot of flu and cold viruses going around at that time, people were getting sick, and I bet others were experiencing the same thing at the same time.

Robinson said that, for most of his life, he had been the guy who saw a doctor only once a year for an annual checkup. Last February, though, he got sidelined for a short time by the flu virus, he said.

Once Robinson felt better, he said, he returned to the gym but felt really tired. He took his dog out for a walk near his home in midtown Sacramento, he said, but he felt so exhausted he had a hard time getting back home.

“I was thinking it would just get better, but I noticed it wasn’t getting better,” Robinson said. “I checked my heart rate with an app on my phone, and my heart was beating at 155 beats a minute nonstop, so I made an appointment with my primary care.”

The doctor’s assistant took his vitals and then told him to get to a hospital right away, Robinson said, and even though he felt a little better, he went over to Mercy General Hospital in east Sacramento. The waiting room in the emergency department was packed with people who had the flu, Robinson recalled, but as soon the staff took his vitals, he got pulled to the front of the line.